Let's Celebrate National Gas Pain Month

Unlike our Euro brethren, who have lengthy holidays to recover from their grueling 20-hour work weeks, we can’t catch a break. Sure, we have Arbor Day, but it only seems appropriate to have a holiday that stays with us for more than just a day.

How about National Gas Pain Month?

Time for National Gas Pain Month?
(Getty Images)

National Gas Pain Month would be the collective feeling of the pain we feel each time we refuel our cars, buy groceries, heat our homes, lay people off, lose our jobs, pull out our hair and contemplate “crimes of opportunity” (aka siphoning your neighbor’s gas tank), all in the name of making Arab sheiks the world’s first trillionaires.

Since America has perfected its position of being slaves to overseas barrels, what better time for such a national celebration? And given America’s insatiable appetite, National Gas Pain Month would just roll from month to month. So whether gas is $4, $5 this summer, or $9 when the braintrust strikes Iran, we will never have to worry about a shortage of gas pain.

Of course, there are side effects. It hurts a lot more as the price goes up. And since there’s no doctor in town, we yet solve — let alone diagnose — the problem. The prognosis for recovery isn’t good.

To those up in arms about skyrocketing gas prices: shut up and take your pain. It’s your own fault.

Oh sure, there are renewed calls for drilling — just like in 2008. Back then the economy tanked, oil prices collapsed, and gas returned to “normal.”

Result? Complacency.

Now that prices have spiked again, Obama is a convenient target. While he is partially responsible, so are his blamers. Consider:

• It was George H.W. Bush who implemented the moratorium on offshore drilling. And it was the junior Bush who, rather than opening up ANWR and reversing Dad’s mistake while he had significant congressional majorities (after 9/11, he could have had anything), waited until gas spiraled out of control to call for drilling. But it was too late.

• A Republican congressman told me that he couldn’t introduce a drilling bill while he was in the minority. Civics 101 says differently. The bill may not emerge from a Democratic committee, but it absolutely could have been introduced. And that would have been a coup, since Obama made offshore drilling and nuclear power a cornerstone of his 2010 State of the Union address. But the GOP response? He didn’t really believe that. Remember, this is the same president who just green-lighted the first new nuclear power plants since 1978. A Democrat doing that is akin to Ronald Reagan calling for a ban of all handguns. But rather than work with the President on (yes — a Republican!) issue, the result was partisan attacks. Hence, no offshore drilling.

Mr. Obama doesn’t get a free pass. He ridiculed those who advocate drilling to lower gas prices. Not to be a stickler, but if you produce more of something, the price drops. Market-feasible alternative energy resources should also be developed, but let’s be real. Oil is the unrivaled king, so it’s time to drill domestically.

Obama delayed the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was a mistake. But what so many are missing is that most of that oil is Canadian. Why are we not responsibly drilling on our own turf, keeping the jobs and revenue stateside?

Natural gas just hit a 10-year low, while oil is soaring. So the wells that should be producing the unlimited, clean-burning shale gas beneath our feet are being capped, killing jobs.

Most disturbing are congressional hearings on oil refinery closings, and no, that’s not a joke. Congressman Pat Meehan and Senator Bob Casey are looking for answers as to how closings will affect oil prices and impact national security.

A boatload of taxpayer cash could be saved by stating the obvious. The closings will be very bad. Prices will continue to rise, and we will be less secure. Next hearing?

When did Congress start prioritizing national security anyway, since it cares infinitely more about the security of Middle Eastern sheikdoms? Why? Oil.

By refusing to drill, Americans will continue to die in Muslim lands. And no amount of hearings, protests, or political rhetoric will change that. Our men and women are not “fighting for our freedom,” nor “keeping the war over there.”

They are doing the bidding of a Congress, and the people who elect them, who are too complacent to protect America by harnessing our unparalleled energy resources.

And there’s no tonic to cleanse the soul from the blood we have on our hands.

An accredited member of the media, Chris Freind is an independent columnist, television commentator, and investigative reporter who operates his own news bureau, Friendly Fire Zone. Read more reports from Chris Freind — Click Here Now.